Alban Berg

Four Pieces op. 5 for Clarinet and Piano

In a letter to Erwin Schulhoff, Berg bitterly complained about his unsuccessful attempt to find a publisher for his “Pieces for Clarinet”, “Once again at my own expense! A few antique pieces in my apartment had to pay for it …” The concise miniatures are outstanding examples of the “little pieces” genre, to which Arnold Schoenberg and Anton von Webern also contributed. We warmly recommend these short but imaginative pieces in Henle Urtext to all those clarinettists who are willing to experiment. This edition is worldwide available.

This is a great new edition of Berg’s Vier Stücke. … It is the attention to detail that makes this edition so attractive to both performer and scholar. The music is clearer and less squashed – no small achievement given Berg’s incredibly precise markings – and Henle has also solved the page-turn problem in the fourth piece. For those with an academic interest there is a comprehensive discussion of sources and a preface which provides background to the music and its context. These advantages come at a price but should we really mind paying for quality?[Music Teacher England, 2007]